DesignIt’s a badly-kept secret that the BlackBerry DTEK60 is based on the Alcatel-built TCL 950, with BlackBerry announcing earlier last month that it’s no longer building its own hardware and instead letting someone else do the heavy lifting

Both of the DTEK models released this year at least maintain some form of uniformity, and it’s certainly not a bad design either.

The BlackBerry DTEK60 sports a premium glass and aluminium frame (where the previous model perhaps relied on plastic just a little too much), in a mash of black, silver and grey. The darker aluminium bezels contrast nicely with the glass rear where a single, lone reminder of the BlackBerry brand lives.

After carting around Google’s supersized Pixel XL for the past few weeks, the mere 3g weight difference isn’t at all noticeable. The BlackBerry DTEK60 rocks a similarly-sized 5.5in display which would cause us to label it as lumbering and imposing if it wasn’t for its thinness.

At just 6.9mm thick, it surpasses the DTEK50 as BlackBerry’s “thinnest smartphone ever” (why don’t you plough another stake through its heart, eh BlackBerry?), yet in hand it feels a little awkward. This is especially true when reaching for the minuscule fingerprint reader found on the rear. It really is the dinkiest, and looks all the more silly when there’s a honking great camera protrusion above. That thing sticks out a ton, but that’s the price we’re paying for this new 21MP sensor.

The power button has been relegated to the left of the device, while the programmable ‘Convenience Button’ is still a thing, and lives below the volume controls on the right.

Thankfully, the dual front and rear speakers make a welcome return, and we’re pleased that BlackBerry is obviously paying attention to this often overlooked aspect. Audio output is again controlled by JBL’s Waves MaxxAudio – we’d recommend turning off the ‘Auto select’ mode, and tweaking the settings in order to get the best results.

HardwareGone is the under-powered engine-room of the DTEK50, and in comes the darling of 2016 – Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820. This is a quad-core model with cores running at 2.15GHz and 1.6GHz. It’s backed with 4GB of RAM.

DisplayThe reference TCL model that the DTEK60 was built on scrimped on the display front with an unspectacular FHD resolution, but fortunately the BlackBerry uses an upgraded 2560×1440 QHD panel.

The 5.5in AMOLED display is pleasantly bright, and plenty sharp at 534ppi, which BlackBerry felt compelled to boast is 4x the number of pixels seen on a standard HDTV. We must also heap praise on the curved glass layer that covers the display, with this slight tapering helping to set it apart from the hordes of plain Androids otherwise clamouring for our custom.

It’s supposed to be “scratch and smudge resistant” too, but even with limited use our fingerprints were beginning to leave their mark. To us, that makes it no better than the competition it hopes to beat.

CamerasThe rear-mounted 21MP camera is built around a Sony IMX230 sensor, the f/2.0 aperture is perfunctory, but Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) and dual-tone LED flash are both nice additions. It impresses in its speed too – the time it took to switch into shooting mode and fire that shutter was almost instantaneous.

There’s more than enough features to satisfy the casual photographer, including built-in filters, and a useful HDR mode. In addition, a manual mode offers white balance, shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, and exposure compensation for greater control.